Ethanol fueling stations are nowhere near as prevalent in California as they are in the Midwest, where the main ethanol feedstock – corn – grows in abundance and demand for the fuel source is high.

Several hundred ethanol stations dot the Minnesota landscape. In California, there are five.

That number, though, is growing.

Ethanol wholesaler Pearson Fuels, with headquarters in San Diego, is assisting in the construction of eight ethanol stations in California, including: Perris, Beaumont, Carlsbad, Concord, Hayward, San Jose, Carmichael and Sacramento.

“We want them spread out,” said Mike Lewis, a principal in Pearson Fuels.

Perris and Beaumont have another thing going for them: They’re located in well-traveled areas, said JoAnn Armenta, a regional coordinator for Clean Cities, an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy that provided funding for the stations.

The Beaumont station is being built from the ground up. It will produce Chevron products, including gasoline and diesel as well as E85, fuel that’s 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

The station in Perris, Joe’s 76, already exists. An ethanol pump is being added.

Both should be selling ethanol by the end of next spring, Lewis said.

Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, said he expects more ethanol stations to be built in California as the country’s big three automakers follow their pledge to roll out more flex-fuel vehicles which can operate on gasoline or ethanol.

Eleven flex-fuel models from General Motors are available in the U.S., including the 2008 Chevy Tahoe and the Chevy Impala, according to the company’s Web site.

Joe Irwin of the California Ethanol Vehicle Coalition in Sacramento said he thinks that by the end of 2009, there will be at least 30 ethanol stations in the state.

It’s estimated that roughly 500,000 flex-fuel vehicles are on the road in California, Irwin said. Nationwide, the number is approximately 7 million, Lewis said.

Ethanol is a renewable fuel that, when burned, produces fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline or diesel. Armenta hopes more ethanol stations will be built along Interstate 10 “to support the heavy-duty vehicles,” she said. The ethanol station being built in Beaumont is just off the busy freeway linking Los Angeles and Phoenix.

Ethanol is less expensive than gasoline, sometimes by as much as $1 per gallon, Lewis said. A downside to ethanol is that it gets fewer miles per gallon than gasoline. Irwin said California is the largest consumer of ethanol in the country because according to the commission the state’s gasoline blend is 6 percent ethanol.